Wealth is not to feed our egos but to feed the hungry and to help people help themselves.
A man’s reading program should be as carefully planned as his daily diet, for that too is food, without which he cannot grow mentally.
The man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment of ends.
Instead of the question “What must I do for my employer?” substitute “What can I do”
Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.
Humanities education is the worst thing for an industrialist.
Every man gravitates to where he belongs in life, just as surely as water seeks and finds its level. His position is measured precisely by the quality and quantity of the service he renders, plus the mental attitude with which he relates himself to other people...
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.
There is no idol more debasing than the worship of money.
The more difficult a problem becomes, the more interesting it is.
Pioneering don’t pay.
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.
I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves.
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.
It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.
I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust to be managed for the good of others.
If it is right that schools should be maintained by the whole community for the well-being of the whole, it is right also that libraries should be so maintained.